Channel 5 doesn’t get talked about as much as ITV or Channel 4, but it reaches a very large audience, and it’s often overlooked by businesses planning their first campaign. It’s also going through more change than any of the other main channels at the moment, both in what it’s called and in who sells its advertising, so you’ll want to know where things stand before you decide whether it belongs in your plan.
It’s now called 5
In March 2025 the channel dropped the word “Channel” and became simply 5. Its streaming service, which used to be called My5, was replaced at the same time by a new one, also called 5. Most people still call it Channel 5, and so do we most of the time, but you’ll see the new name on screen and on anything you’re sent about a campaign. It’s owned by the American media company Paramount.
Who watches it
The new name hasn’t changed who the channel is for, and that’s the part an advertiser most needs to understand. While much of television was competing for younger viewers, 5 built its schedule around the people the other channels were paying less attention to. Ben Frow, who was in charge of its programmes, told a Royal Television Society event in 2022 that young people were very hard to win and no longer watched television in the conventional way, and that he could waste a lot of money trying. The audience he’d built instead was described at the same event as more widely spread across the regions than most, older, and often upmarket.
You can see that in the programmes, where All Creatures Great and Small and The Yorkshire Vet are typical of a schedule that leans towards warm drama, history and popular documentaries, much of it made a long way from London. It’s a large audience as well as a distinctive one, and when the new partnership described below was announced, the two broadcasters said that 5 reaches 28.5 million people across the UK each month.
For a lot of businesses that’s a very good audience to have. Older viewers are often the ones who own their home and have the time and the means for home improvements, a holiday or a change of car, and they tend to watch more television than younger people do. Imagine a family firm that fits walk-in showers and stairlifts across the north of England. Its customers, and the sons and daughters who often make the first phone call on their behalf, are far more likely to be found watching an evening drama on 5 than a reality series on a channel aimed at people in their twenties, so 5 could do more for that firm than a more fashionable choice would.
The family of channels
As with the other broadcasters, there’s more than one channel to choose from. Alongside the main channel there’s 5USA, 5Star, 5Select and 5Action, and Milkshake! for younger children. Each has its own kind of programme and its own kind of viewer, which helps when you’re trying to reach a particular audience. 5USA, for instance, is built around American drama, while Milkshake! is a case apart, because the rules on what can be advertised around programmes for young children are tighter than they are elsewhere in the schedule.
Who sells the advertising
Who sells the airtime on those channels is the part that’s changing. For the last few years, the advertising on 5 has been sold by Sky Media, which is Sky’s advertising business. So at the moment a campaign on 5 is booked through Sky, alongside the other channels Sky sells.
In September 2026, Channel 4 and 5 announced that Channel 4’s sales team will take over from 2027. From then, the airtime on 5 and its sister channels will be sold alongside Channel 4’s.
The two make an interesting pair, because their audiences are so different. Channel 4 is known for younger viewers and 5 for older ones, and the announcement described the combined offer as covering children’s audiences, 16 to 34 year olds, regional audiences and the better-off households the trade calls ABC1. For advertisers, that should mean being able to plan Channel 4 and 5 together in one conversation, with one team able to say how much of each a particular campaign needs.
The exact date of the changeover hasn’t been given, but a campaign that starts and finishes this year is unaffected. If you’re planning one that runs into 2027, our media buying partners will know who to deal with at each stage, so it isn’t something you’d have to keep track of yourself.
Live TV, streaming and staying local
You can advertise in the ad breaks on the live channels in the usual way, or on the 5 streaming service, where the advert is shown to people watching on demand. A campaign can use either, or a mixture of the two.
Because of the way 5 is sold, the options for narrowing a campaign down to a particular area aren’t the same as on ITV, and they may well change again when the new arrangement starts. At the moment there’s a useful one that comes from the connection with Sky, because the channel is among those on which AdSmart from Sky works. It has been since January 2017, when The Drum reported that it had become the first public service broadcaster to join. That means an advert bought for a chosen set of households, perhaps the postcodes around a single showroom, can appear in the breaks on 5 in the homes that AdSmart reaches.
The announcement about the new arrangement doesn’t say whether that will carry on once Channel 4’s team takes over, so we’d treat it as something that’s available today and not yet confirmed for 2027. If keeping your advertising local matters to you, it’s one of the first things our media buying partners will check, and we’ve explained the general picture in local TV advertising by postcode.
Getting an advert onto 5
Whoever is selling the airtime, the advert itself has to meet the same requirements. It needs to be made to broadcast standard, which covers the picture, the sound and the file that’s delivered, and it has to be approved before it goes on air, which we’ve explained in our guide to Clearcast. Airtime is usually booked some weeks ahead, so it helps to leave yourself time.
With the sales arrangements changing, 5 is a good example of why most advertisers have their airtime handled by a media buyer. A media buyer knows who is selling what, can look at 5 alongside the other channels and will recommend the mix that suits your budget, as we’ve explained in why use a media buyer? It’s how we work ourselves, with our media buying partners planning and booking the airtime while we make the advert, get it cleared and deliver it.
Get in touch and tell us a little about your customers, and we’ll give you an honest view on whether 5 belongs in your campaign, because with 5 the answer depends on who they are more than on anything else.